Burn
by griffin holloway
Summary: Character Study. Primrose Everdeen aspires to light up the darkness. She's with Katniss, no matter what happens. And she's willing to jump into the flames for it.


Prim.

She's not like her sister.

Really, not at all.

You see, if Prim is the rose - then Katniss is the thorns.

She's younger, fairer, much sweeter, with a frantic love for life and longing for hope and a simple desire for peace in her heart.

Her skin is pink to the touch, her hair cascades down her back in blonde braids and her eyes are so deep you could drown in them.

She's not dark or mysterious or fiercely beautiful. She's never been the girl on fire. But she's watched her sister burn for her. Burn for the world.

Katniss is everything she is because of her and Prim doesn't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. All she knows is that everything that is happening somehow feels like her fault. Or it could be her redemption.

* * *

The reaping still haunts her, day and night. She can't admit it to anyone. Not to her mother and especially not to the one who saved her from a brutal death in an arena full of more fear and pain than she ever would have experienced in her life. She can't find in within her to tell her dear sister who saved her from her worst nightmares coming true. She can't; she won't.

When Katniss was first taken to the games, Prim didn't feel responsible. She just felt sad. She just felt angry. And she was terrified. _She_ was terrified that Katniss would not be coming back to her, that _she_ would lose her forever. It terrified _her._

Now she thinks it's almost selfish to have thought that way. _Katniss_ was the one who deserved to be afraid. _Katniss_ volunteered for her. _Katniss_ took her place. _Katniss_ almost died for her. And Katniss is back home and she is still so busy trying to protect others that she is forgetting to protect herself. But it's been that way since their father died. Prim cannot even remember his voice anymore but she can remember how Katniss light herself on fire to keep everyone else warm. At twelve, at sixteen, and most likely forever. She will sacrifice everything for the ones she loves.

So Prim can accept her guilt. She can accept her responsibility. She is no longer as innocent as she seems and she no longer needs to wear her heart stitched onto the sleeve of her faded dress. Because no one needs a rattled young girl from district twelve. They need Prim. They need the Prim they know. And Katniss needs Prim. She needs her understanding. They can be happy. It's easiest. It's for the best.

Until the next year brings a worse game to be played. Katniss is to be thrown into an arena again with Peeta and twenty-two other victors that were once promised the same freedom. And this time as Prim raises her three fingers in salute, she's more terrified than ever before.

Nobody is safe.

* * *

Suddenly she's only thirteen but she feels thirty.

Her maturity is strong, evident and needed. So she embraces it. She's grown up. Her sister has survived two hunger games and a war is starting. Nobody has time for anything but reality. It's all been one big domino effect and the pieces keep falling one after another.

Prim knows that the love Katniss has for her was the first spark that eventually flickered the rebellion into existence. It wasn't just the berries. It wasn't just Peeta. It was love and it's still burning and it makes her heart _flutter_. All her life, Prim has looked to her sister. And now Katniss is looking to her.

Because she _knows_ Katniss. Her sister doesn't step knee deep into anything. No, she's always in way over her head. She is the type of girl who would chase tornadoes down the alley just to get caught up in a whirlwind outside her mind. She is the type of girl who is so bold and impulsive and headstrong and stubborn that it makes people hate her. But just like fire she's enthralling, and she's catching. And it might still get her killed.

People seem to forget that her sister is just a girl. That she never wanted this. She's only human. She's endured things that people shouldn't have to handle, things they cannot handle. It doesn't excuse her behavior, but it explains it. She's only seventeen, but tired. And they all need the Mockingjay, not Katniss.

They don't need Katniss like Peeta, Haymitch, Gale and even Finnick do. Because the Katniss that Prim knows is so raw, so authentic, that she can touch you when you are around her. You can almost taste her bittersweetness on the tip of your tongue. It's what makes her so special and she can't even step away from herself to see it.

She can't see it. She looks in the mirror and she still sees hands wrapped around her throat from the boy she loves and she looks in the mirror and sees the faces of those she has had to kill and she looks in the mirror and sees nothing that anybody else sees and it makes Prim want to _sob_.

The Katniss she sees now is older and angrier and far more cynical than she was before the games. She looks like she doesn't feel at home in her own body.

And all of this radiates from her sister like a fire in her belly that is burning. Burning for change.

Katniss is a soldier now. She's not the girl who once volunteered for her.

She will never be.

* * *

Prim has her own fire in her belly that burns for other people. It's compassion.

She wants to protect them like Katniss protects her. So she takes the love Katniss has for her and spreads it around. Helping people is what helps her breathe. Healing people is what heals her. She's training to be a doctor someday.

If she can ease another person's suffering, her life won't ever be in vain. Then the suffering they all have endured in this life will not be in vain.

This is how the world needs her. This is how she lives when Katniss leaves to fight. If she sees her again, they will be free.

It's why she never stopped seeing hope. It's why she goes along to the Capitol with the team of other medics, wanting to save others even though she couldn't save her sister. It's why she runs towards the barricade of children when the bombs go off, even though she is no less of a child herself.

It's why she turns when she hears her name, when she hears it coming from her voice. It's why she sees her beloved sister before her eyes and breathes in love and relief as her lips form to breathe out her name. It's why seconds later she goes down in a brilliant blaze of fury that ignites her body into nothing but ash.

* * *

Katniss saw it. She saw her burn.

Prim burned for her. She burned for the new world.

Primrose Everdeen flew too close to the sun and she paid for it.

But now - she's free.

* * *

 **A/N:** I wanted to write something for dear Prim. I also wanted to include some of Prim's perspective of Katniss throughout some events of the series. We can only imagine it as we see it. I don't think Prim was as naive and meek as some people assume and I don't think Katniss deserves all the hate she tends to receive overall. Prim was her greatest strength and her greatest weakness and she tries so hard to protect her but she just _can't_ in the end.

Prim's death vitally shows the consequences of war. You cannot protect anyone. No one is safe. But Prim's character in general is important to recognize and acknowledge. I think she was the one who suffered the most. Even though she never endured the games, she endured her life. She was always there, through everything and anything. The odds were never in her favor.

The only consolation is that she knew love. So much love, that it blinded everything else. And her life wasn't just measured in years, it was measured in the lives she touched, and Prim seemed to touch everyone she met. And now she doesn't ever have to suffer again. She and Katniss are free, just in different ways.

Feedback is always welcomed and appreciated!


End file.
